In most stories or myths, hybrid creatures are rare. And no, I’m not talking about shifters or were creatures who can change form, as they have become a species in their own right.

Instead, I’m talking about those anomalies—the chimera, the centaur, the satyr, the harpy, the lamia, the sphinx, the Anubis, the gorgon, the Pegasus, and man, could I go on. In fact, here’s a link to a nice wiki list of them, if you’re interested.

More recently, fiction and cinema have mashed together more types of creatures in interesting ways to test the boundaries of fantasy and science fiction and horror, like the vampire-werewolf hybrid from Underworld, Supernatural,andThe Vampire Diaries.

For me, these are the most fascinating because most lore indicates how vampire and werewolves, who both transform others via a bite, are poisonous to one another. This is true in my Broken World as well, although for a reason that I haven’t found for other mythologies.

I’ll take this opportunity to explain. Phea, the first vampire and their ruling queen, is also the mother of all shifters—or bosex as I like to call them. Her son, Anthemos Romulous Celampresian, is the Atlantean god of beast and the father of all bosex. My variety of species sprung from Anthemos mating with various human women, and their offspring took on animal forms until puberty. The problem arose when Anthemos fell in love with one of these human women. His mother, Phea, grew jealous, made threats, and made attempts to kill his family. Because of this, he made their blood poisonous to her, and therefore, all other vampires as a means to hinder her ability to bring them harm.

This is why Ria’s ability to drink from Mark in book two throws everyone for a loop. She can do this because she’s the first natural hybrid in hundreds of years and only the second in existence, and her phoenix powers allows her to perform some strange feats.

However, her abilities are not the main reason for concern over her hybrid status, except maybe for her personal desire not to be dissected by her queen, Phea. No, she indicates a larger-world phenomenon. It means chaos, an undoing of the usual rules, and a time of transition, although what that means, nobody is really clear about yet.

Except for me, but I don’t count.

I have snuck in a few clues, like how Julia in book three is able to walk around in the sunlight when in book one, James made a pretty big deal about Ria being up before darkness. She explained this away as a part of her hybrid status, but was that it?

Well, I can’t tell you it all, now, can I? But the answer is both yes, and no…

Want to learn more about the intricacies of hybrids in my Broken World? Take a dive into the series.

So if we believe Plato’s notes on Atlantis, the continent should lie somewhere off the coast-lines of the Atlantic Ocean. However, several hypotheses have tried to connect Eastern Atlantic structures as megalithic buildings, such as chambered tombs or stone monuments. These megalithic builders were characteristic of prehistoric Europe, and the claims of matching buildings in the Atlantic Americas do not uphold under close inspection. Essentially, “there are no America equivalents of the chambered tombs of the stone rings at Stonehenge, Avebury, and Carnac” (James and Thorpe).

The various geologic claims of Atlantis as a lost continent, in short, are unfounded. The continental drift, in which the world’s one landmass fractured apart—now known as the tectonic plate theory, does not allow room for the Atlantean continent. Recent theories suggest Altantis may have relocated to Antartica, but no evidence exists to support this other than a literal reading of Plato.

Although Plato’s depiction of the lost city was debunked, K.T. Frost, a young Belfast University scholar, suggested that Atlanteans echo the once-flourishing Minoan civilization in Crete: “Egyptian tomb paintings depicting visitors in Minoan-style costume showed that the Egyptians were aware of this civilization, while its sudden disappearance about 1400 B.C., Frost suggested might have given them the impression that ‘the whole kingdom had sunk in the sea’” (James and Thrope). The only drawback was the lack of a big enough catastrophe.

Greek archeologist Spyridon Marinatos theorized that the crater left by the explosion of Thera, a Bronze Age volcanic explosion turned tsunami, left a crater and gave rise to the tale of Altantis’ destruction. His 1967 excavation uncovered streets, houses, and beautiful pottery. This discovery prompted several books in 1969 that argued Thera as the real Atlantis. However, many of the comparisons between the Minoan and Atlantean civilizations were too weak, the explosion of Knossos a decade and a half earlier, and the lack of communication breakdown between Egypt and the Aegean world was not significant to indicate a “sinking” of an island.